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Marstage Wall feeding at the mouth of an open sewer. He met White-tip and Greymuzzle, and together they returned to the duckpond when the wildfowl flighted over. He was swimming round one bend of the ram’s-horn when the big dog heard the strokes of his hindlegs and swam after him again. Tarka dived and twisted, and although he was bitten twice in the neck and once through the paw, he was not caught. His mother’s training had made him swift and strong. He quitted the water and was pursued through grassy tufts and thistles and bunches of frayed flags to the seawall, where the big dog turned and whistled to his mate. Hearing another whistleit was really an echo of his ownhe galloped in rage back to the duckpond. Then Tarka whistled, and the dog returned to kill him. Tarka went up and over the sea-wall at his greatest speed, across the mud and stones of the pill and to the western sea-wall, where he stopped. He cried Ic-yang! several times, but if the dog had returned in answer to the challenge, it is doubtful whether Tarka would have waited to drink the blood of his enemy.

Already his mother had forgotten, and perhaps would never again remember, that she had loved a cub called Tarka.